


It Feels Like Coming Home

by WhatIsAir



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: 5+1 Things, Christmas, Festive fic, First Kiss, M/M, Pining Sherlock, bit late I know, making out for science, stake outs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-16
Updated: 2016-01-16
Packaged: 2018-05-14 05:21:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5730952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhatIsAir/pseuds/WhatIsAir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock grabbed John by the shoulders. “Put your mouth on my neck.”</p>
<p>“I – what?” John said weakly. He sounded like he was either about to punch Sherlock or snog the breath out of him. (Sherlock knew which option he preferred.)</p>
<p>OR: 5 times Sherlock and John spent Christmas together, and the 1 time they spent it together-together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Feels Like Coming Home

**Author's Note:**

> season-wise i know this is extremely late to the party, but i forgot to post it a couple weeks back and thought i'd do it now. that said - enjoy (:

Their first Christmas together was spent in a cramped stairwell in an abandoned building.

“Shut up,” Sherlock murmured, not taking his eyes off the text he was sending Lestrade. He checked the time and frowned; their suspect should have arrived by now.

Besides him, John sputtered indignantly. “I’m n – not sp – speaking!”

“Your teeth are chattering.”

“Oh, w – well, I’m bloody _sorry_ I’m so cold I c – can’t control my bodily f – functions,” John whispered, because they were in the middle of a stakeout and subterfuge was nothing if not his strong suit.

Sherlock huffed. He shoved his phone into his jacket pocket, unwound his scarf from his neck and shoved it at John. “Here.”

“Th – thanks.”

John’s hands, ice cold from the wind, refused to cooperate. After watching John attempt to put the scarf on with thinly veiled amusement, Sherlock pushed his hands away and did it for him.

“Fanks,” John said again, his voice now muffled by the woollen material. Sherlock watched as he pulled it higher to cover his nose.

Unbidden, something warm curled in Sherlock’s chest at the sight of his scarf on John. He realized his hand was still on John’s chest and hurriedly yanked it away.

“Keep it,” he said, when John tried to hand it back to him three hours later, back in the comfort of their flat. (The stakeout had been a complete failure.)They were both shivering from the cold, John’s nose was red and Sherlock was feeling the loss of scarf around his neck very keenly.

John’s answering smile somehow made the cold he got the next day worth it.

-

Next year found the two of them in Angelo’s, having a perfectly normal not-a-date dinner.

“Thanks, Angelo,” said John, his expression one of fond exasperation, when the man placed a rosemary-scented candle on the table between them.

Sherlock crossed his legs under the table and waited, as Angelo walked off, for John to say the inevitable.

“He _does_ know this isn’t a date, right?”

There it was. Sherlock fought the urge to roll his eyes. (John didn’t like it when he rolled his eyes.)

“Yes, I believe so.” He pushed John’s unopened menu pointedly towards him. “But you know Angelo. Always so happy clappy and trying to inflict it on the rest of the world.”

“Yeah, but still.” John sounded unconvinced.

Sherlock sighed. He reached out, snuffed the candle and eased it onto the table adjacent theirs. “There. Happy?”

John made a non-committal grunt and finally perused his menu. They both ended up ordering exactly the same thing they always did – salmon linguine for John, mushroom risotto for Sherlock, a bottle of rosé between them.

Sherlock spent the meal as he always did whenever they were at Angelo’s: staring out the window across the street, thinking about the first not-a-date they’d had while waiting for the cabbie.

“Are you gonna eat that?” John asked, about a quarter of an hour later.

Sherlock blinked. His food had gone cold; he hadn’t even noticed it arriving. “No.”

John pursed his lips. (He looked vaguely disappointed. Something sank in the pit of Sherlock’s stomach.) “We can have Angelo box it up.”

“If you want,” Sherlock shrugged, pulling his phone out to see whether Lestrade had any exciting murders waiting to be solved. (There were none.)

John huffed and waved Angelo over, evidently displeased about Sherlock’s dining etiquette.

Sherlock didn’t care; he couldn’t care less what John thought. He reached out to refill his wine glass and found the bottle empty. The unlit candle on the next table mocked him. Sherlock mentally gave it the finger.

“Let’s go,” he said, as soon as the food had been transferred into a plastic container. He pushed his chair back and stood, then immediately swayed.

All of a sudden John’s hand was on the small of his back, steadying him. Sherlock swatted half-heartedly at him. “I’m fine, hones’ly, John.”

John snorted and kept his hand where it was, tugging with his other so that Sherlock’s arm was looped around his shoulders.

Once they were back in the flat, John heated the risotto up and made him eat it while they watched some inane reality show on the telly, falling asleep afterwards with his head pillowed on Sherlock’s shoulder.

It was possibly the best Christmas (not counting ‘four suicides and a note!’) that Sherlock had had.

-

Their third Christmas together was spent apart.

Sherlock now knows, from what John’s told him, that John spent that particular Christmas at Harry’s, an awkward affair that John doesn’t like recounting the tale of. (All Sherlock’s been able to gather from drunken snippets John’s let slip over the past couple of years is that the evening ended in a blazing row, a conciliatory Just Dance-off on Harry’s crappy Wii, and a disproportionate amount of mulled wine.) Sherlock’s one regret about this is that he hadn’t thought to ask for pictures.

Sherlock himself spent the same Christmas in a holding cell in Lebanon, hoping desperately that Mycroft would make some calls, pull some strings and get him out, and hating himself for even hoping.

At around 3 in the morning, the door to his cell opened and a guard barked something at him in Arabic and made a complicated gesture with his hand. Sporting a massive headache from an unfortunate run-in with a police baton earlier during the day, it took Sherlock far too long, in his bewildered state, to realize the guard meant for him to go with him.

He struggled to his feet and hobbled (he had a twisted ankle) to the cell door. The guard led him down the hallway of the precinct to what was presumably his office. He was pointed towards the lone chair in front of the wooden desk, after which the guard swiveled a computer screen round so it faced Sherlock.

“Ugh, not this again,” Sherlock muttered, as the guard opened up Skype.

He closed his eyes and awaited his inevitable doom.

“Hello, brother dear,” Mycroft’s slimy voice oozed from the other end of the video call.

Sherlock decided to brave Fate. He opened his eyes. “Mycroft.”

“My, my, you’re not doing a very good job at keeping a low profile, are you?” Mycroft said, with something resembling smug satisfaction.

“Shut up, Mycroft.”

“And touchy. Well –” Mycroft spread his arms in a sweeping gesture that the webcam couldn’t capture, “Not going to thank me? I did just save you from another prison sentence. This is – what, only the third time this month? Whatever you’re doing to shut down Moriarty’s network, Sherlock, you have to start doing it with a bit more… finesse.”

“I made a mistake, _okay_?” Sherlock said through gritted teeth. His faced was flushed; surely Mycroft could see it. “It won’t happen again.”

Mycroft was uncharacteristically silent for a beat, before saying with a seriousness Sherlock didn’t normally associate with him, “Be careful, Sherlock. There’s only so much I can do for you, sitting behind a desk here in England. Do it for John’s sake, if not mine.”

Sherlock deflated at the mention of John. (He’d had to keep reminding himself lately, that he was doing this for John. To save him. That was sometimes the only thing holding him back from diving headfirst into reckless situations without regard for personal safety – the thought that if he survived this, John would be waiting back home.)

“I’ll do my best.”

“Good luck, Sherlock,” Mycroft said, a wan smile flickering at his lips.

The call disconnected, and Sherlock was left staring blankly at the screen.

“You go now,” the guard said to him in rough, broken English, pointing at the door.

He was let out of the precinct and given a rather hefty sum of cash (courtesy of Mycroft) along with a formal pardon from the Lebanese police. He bought a navy blue scarf at the first shop he came across, wound it around his neck despite the heat, and tried to imagine that it was John’s scarf (John’s touch) resting against his skin.

Needless to say, that isn’t a Christmas he likes to dwell on.

-

The following 25th December found Sherlock standing awkwardly in the corner of their (his, now) flat, pretending to talk to Molly as he watched John and Mary across the room.

“Do you wanna make out?” Molly asked demurely.

“Mm-hm,” Sherlock said distractedly in response, glaring at Mary’s hand on the small of John’s back, at the completely unnecessary manner in which she was draped over him. Just then, John laughed at something Mary said, his head thrown back and his eyes alight, looking happier than Sherlock could ever remember him being. ( _He_ certainly couldn’t make John this happy.)

Molly sighed. “You poor thing. Still pining over John after all these years.”

“ _What?_ ” Sherlock squawked, glancing wildly down at Molly, then back across the room at John, who now had his _arm around Mary’s shoulders_ , goddamit. “I – _pining_?”

“It’s been obvious since day two that you were completely gone for him,” Molly said matter-of-factly, taking a sip from her champagne flute as though she hadn’t just upended his entire universe.

“ _Obvious?_ ” Sherlock spluttered. (Now she’d even reduced his mental capacity to one-word responses. The day was just getting better and better.)

He took a sip from the mug of tea he was holding and gagged; he’d somehow managed to add salt instead of sugar. He turned and discreetly poured the drink down the drain. Next to him, Molly tutted, and decided to take pity on him.

“Listen,” she said, laying a hand on his arm, “I might know a thing or two about dealing with unreturned, ehm, _affections_. So, keep that in mind if you ever want someone to talk to, alright?”

“Er –” Sherlock said eloquently, blinking down at her, then snapped his mouth shut before he could embarrass himself any further.

Molly, who hadn’t seemed to expect anything else, took the mug from him and busied herself with the kettle. A minute later she pressed a steaming mug of tea into his hands.

She was gone before Sherlock could think to thank her, across the room and engrossed in a discussion with Mrs. Hudson about cats. He took a sip of the tea (semi-skimmed milk and with a ridiculous amount of sugar, just how he liked it), and wondered how it was possible to feel like he was losing John when in fact he’d already lost him two years ago, standing atop St. Bart’s with a phone in his hand and John’s heart in his mouth.

-

Last Christmas was one of the best (and worst) experiences of Sherlock’s entire life, which was saying something.

John was the last person Sherlock expected to see sitting at their (his) kitchen table when he ambled out of his bedroom on Christmas morning. John so rarely visited now; he and Mary were living the life of perfect domestic bliss.

Sherlock blinked, and hitched the bedsheet he was wearing more securely across his shoulders. “John.”

John looked up from where he’d been staring blankly at the worn tabletop in front of him. His eyes were bloodshot and there was a minute tremour in his hand.

“Mary and I –” he said hoarsely, as Sherlock’s traitorous heart began pounding in his chest. (It was obvious from John’s face that their engagement was off, that they’d just had a blazing row and that John wouldn’t be going back to her anytime soon, but why was John _here_?)

“The, er, the wedding’s off,” John said blankly. Sherlock barely refrained from rolling his eyes because _well done, John, for stating the obvious that a five-year-old could have pointed out_. He waited impatiently for the rest of it, hating the part of him that dared to hope.

John was looking at him expectantly, and this was the part where Sherlock was meant to say something, to console.

“I’m sorry,” he offered. “About the wedding.” 

(He wasn’t really. There was a trumpeting fanfare marching around his Mind Palace. He felt the same rush of exhilaration he’d felt that first night, standing by an ambulance with a shock blanket around his shoulders, looking across the sea of swarming police officers and medics to meet John’s steady gaze, and knowing in his heart that John had just shot the cabbie to save him.)

He reached out and laid a hand on John’s shoulder. Then, when John appeared no more forthcoming, asked, “Tea?”

Something of a smile flickered around the edges of John’s lips. “If it’s eyeball-free, yeah.”

Sherlock huffed and pretended to be duly offended. The tea was made and drunk without incident (although Sherlock had had to throw out his milk-curdling experiment because John protested that it was ‘stinking up the fridge, _Jesus_ ’).

Sherlock’s phone buzzed around noon with a message from Lestrade: _body found @ thames. Third one this month. Could be serial killer – please come._

“Oh, it’s _Christmas_!” Sherlock yelped, leaping onto the coffee table and promptly knocking John’s third cup of tea to the floor. “Hurry _up_ , John!”

John cleared his throat, amusement evident in his expression. “You might want to change first, you know. It’s about 2 degrees out there.”

Sherlock groaned; he’d forgotten about the bedsheet. In the end they were five minutes later than they would have been to the crime scene, although Sherlock was at least suitably attired for the occasion.

Eight hours later found the two of them crouched behind a tree by the Thames riverbank, Sherlock with his eyes trained on the motionless dinghy twenty feet ahead, John alternating between stamping his feet and blowing on his hands to warm them.

“Sh, are you _trying_ to get us caught?” Sherlock hissed, tugging John back as his frenetic pacing threatened to blow their tenuous tree-cover.

“Sorry, sorry.” John stopped moving and instead huddled pitifully against the tree trunk, hugging his jacket to his body.

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “You’re just –” He blinked; there was a light on in the dinghy and by its glow he could make out two figures on the embankment heading their way.

“Just what?” John asked, oblivious as usual.

Sherlock grabbed John by the shoulders. “Put your mouth on my neck.”

“I – w _hat_?” John said weakly. He sounded like he was either about to punch Sherlock or snog the breath out of him. (Sherlock knew which option he preferred.)

“There’s someone coming, this is easiest,” Sherlock muttered, backing up until he hit the tree. He tugged at John until he relented, tipping forward until their chests were pressed together.

“Sherlock, I really don’t think –” John protested, swatting at Sherlock’s hand on his shoulder.

The voices were getting closer. Any minute now. “Mouth, neck, _now,”_ Sherlock hissed, “Unless you want our cover blown.”

There was a moment’s hesitation, during which Sherlock could hear John’s heartbeat, a relentless staccato hammering against his ribcage, and then John’s mouth was on his neck and Sherlock was in what would presumably be heaven, if he believed in that kind of thing. He tipped his head down and adjusted his coat just so that it covered John as well.

Their suspects strode past the tree without pause, and Sherlock strained to hear their conversation, a nigh impossible feat given that John had somehow gotten it into his head that kissing wasn’t sufficient; he was now doing something to Sherlock’s neck that involved teeth and tongue and – Sherlock willed himself to focus on the case.

“… the boss said we’ll have to get it to him by tomorrow night, latest. We’re handing off at Waterloo, I think,” the shorter of the two men said, not even bothering to lower his voice, clearing thinking that the two men making out by the tree posed no threat to them.

“And Kingsley, he’ll be coming too, I suppose?” said the taller, before the pair moved out of earshot, leaving John and Sherlock alone once more.

John was still sucking on his neck.

“John,” Sherlock said, pushing at John. He didn’t budge. If anything, he started applying even _more_ pressure. Sherlock swallowed; this had to be the most difficult thing he’d ever attempted in his life, and he’d successfully taken down a criminal mastermind’s network. “ _John_. They’re gone. You can, uh, stop now.”

The pressure eased as John lifted his head and took a step back, leaving Sherlock feeling incredibly bereft all of a sudden.

“So, uh,” John said after a while, when neither of them appeared willing to break the (prolonged, awkward) silence. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, before falling into a quasi-parade rest, squaring his shoulders. (Was he going into battle?)

Sherlock waited, hoping, and hating himself for daring to hope.

“Dinner?” was what John eventually settled on, a shy smile curling the edges of his lips as he glanced up at Sherlock.

Sherlock’s heart (metaphorically) skipped a beat. He blinked; there was a brief sensation of freefall, and he had no idea what was waiting for him at the bottom. “Dinner as in – dinner, or –?”

John rolled his eyes, a fond grin on his face that made the edges of his eyes crinkle. “Dinner as in a date, Sherlock. C’mon, I’ll tell Angelo to bring out every candle he owns and –” John’s face fell. “Sher – Sherlock, are you okay?”

Sherlock blinked again; there was moisture gathering in his eyes. (He’d been falling a second ago, but now, now he was flying.) He laughed, thinking about angels and Moriartys and days spent without John. (None of that mattered now.)

“Yes, I’m – I’m fine. Dinner’s perfect, John, I – _yes_ ,” Sherlock said, aware he wasn’t making sense and not caring in the slightest. He tugged John closer, tilting his head down until his lips found John’s.

Lestrade found them in the exact same position an hour later, once Sherlock remembered to text him about their suspect’s current location.

“Jesus _Christ_ on a tricycle!” Lestrade yelped the moment he got out of his cruiser. “I could have you two arrested for public indecency, you know!”

Sherlock and John both surfaced for air. “Mycroft would get us out,” they said, in near-perfect synchronicity.

Lestrade groaned, banging his forehead against the window of his car. “God help me, now there’s two of them.”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading(: comment and lemme know if you liked it :3
> 
> ooh also if anyone has any prompts, feel free to hit me with 'em i'm always open to suggestions


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